It appears that Office 2003 will include some rights controls so people won’t be able to monkey with your document. Fair ‘nough, sounds like a nice feature. What has me worried is this:

The technology is one of the first major steps in Microsoft’s plan to popularize Windows Rights Management Services, a wide-ranging plan to make restricted access to information a standard part of business processes.

Microsoft. Security. One simply cannot say those two words in a single breath and not smile. As expressed in the article, I think this is a move to eliminate the alternatives. You can use a handful of other applications to open and edit and save Word documents. Guess what. When this new version of Word (and other Office apps) debuts, those other won’t be able do that any more. Microsoft doesn’t appear to be changing its stripes nor its preditory business practices. (via AtAT)